Stanford's EyePassword helps fight "shoulder-surfing" at the ATM

from Engadget by Paul Miller

Gaze-based password entry might sound like a chore -- and we can't say we find the fact of aligning our eyes with an on-screen ATM keyboard all that practical -- but if it means we can finally avoid that awkward moment at the cash machine where we block the keypad view from that shifty-looking sixth grader standing next to us, it just might be worth it. Stanford University has folks working on just such a solution to the dreaded "shoulder-surfing" at ATMs, and has come up with EyePassword. They're testing some systems that track your eyeballs in a variety of ways to perform PIN input, and while the resulting study shows that input times are slowed a little, the system does indeed make "eavesdropping by a malicious observer largely impractical." Of course, there's no telling when something like this will hit your neighborhood deli.

[Via New Scientist ]